I'd be happy to look at any ideas you have about how update-thrashers could be limited. I can appreciate that long release cycle apps would not appear at the top of the listings as often, but I think it's a matter of tuning the time between updates which get top billing to ensure that most apps would have gone from the top 20 or 50 (where users tend to look). I don't see improvements to Market being a big threat to AndAppStore, we get a fair amount of traffic from users on platforms Google doesn't support and so Market isn't officially available (e.g. Koolus distribution on the FreeRunner), which is why I try to explain to developers that listing on AndAppStore widens their distribution as opposed to just covering the same set of users twice. As I see it AndAppStore meets your needs (web based, RSS feed, canonical app links), if there is anything you feel is missing I would welcome your feedback. Al.
--- * Written an Android App? - List it at http://andappstore.com/ * ====== Funky Android Limited is registered in England & Wales with the company number 6741909. The registered head office is Kemp House, 152-160 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX, UK. The views expressed in this email are those of the author and not necessarily those of Funky Android Limited, it's associates, or it's subsidiaries. _____ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Tom Gibara Sent: 20 April 2009 10:32 To: [email protected] Subject: [android-discuss] Re: Comparison of iPhone & G1 app selling Having a constraint based on the time since the last release is probably insufficient since publishers who want to abuse the market in this way would not be deterred, and there would be enough of them that even if only a small proportion of them could publish a rank adjusting update, they would still blot out new releases. Also the software I write tends to have long release cycles (too long probably). That is partially a consequence of me trying to do too much, but I like to think that its also a reflection that I spend a lot of time trying to get an application right first time. Promoting updated applications might penalize authors such as myself, though that wouldn't cause me to change my approach; I enjoy trying to produce high quality software. Returning to the thrust of your original post, I think the core problem is that applications are not very discoverable. I think there's an irony that Google (though it is just one member of the OHA), a company whose ascendency has been in large part due to its ability to promote the discoverability of information through the analysis of openly networked data, is now backed into a very closed market environment where it differentiating strengths are mostly neutralized. A contributing factor to this situation is surely the demands of carriers and perhaps even the nature of the contract with market publishers. Nevertheless, a web-based market that provided canonical links to applications for other websites, together with syndicatable XML based feeds would, I believe, in a relatively short time create an information infrastructure that would provide Google's search engine with the data needed to find relevant high quality applications. I appreciate that such a move could represent a threat to independent services such as AndAppStore, though it could present opportunities if the application database was vendor neutral but that does seems unlikely from my limited perspective. Tom. 2009/4/20 Al Sutton <[email protected]> Hi Tom, You can use release limits to stop that kind of behaviour. Basically you limit the position in the new release table so that a new release doesn't get a position boost unless the prior release has either dropped down to a certain position or the prior release was made more than, say, 7 days ago. Al. --- * Written an Android App? - List it at http://andappstore.com/ * ====== Funky Android Limited is registered in England & Wales with the company number 6741909. The registered head office is Kemp House, 152-160 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX, UK. The views expressed in this email are those of the author and not necessarily those of Funky Android Limited, it's associates, or it's subsidiaries. _____ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Tom Gibara Sent: 20 April 2009 08:55 To: [email protected] Subject: [android-discuss] Re: Comparison of iPhone & G1 app selling Hi Al, Re updated apps: the alternative in an unmoderated market is that one can simply publish faux updates as often as one wants to push one's application back up the rankings; in the absence of a better idea I prefer Google's current approach to this. Tom 2009/4/20 Al Sutton <[email protected]> Josh, He also raised the following points; - Presentation of applications - By default all apps are in one bucket (so apps which generate the 30% for Google et al. and help a developer pay bills get no extra visibility). - Apps which developers release updates for have the same visibility as apps that developers abandon after a single release. Now I know that you can filter by paid or free only apps, but how many of us would have found that option easily? Al. --- * Written an Android App? - List it at http://andappstore.com/ * ====== Funky Android Limited is registered in England & Wales with the company number 6741909. The registered head office is Kemp House, 152-160 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX, UK. The views expressed in this email are those of the author and not necessarily those of Funky Android Limited, it's associates, or it's subsidiaries. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Josh Steiner Sent: 20 April 2009 05:11 To: [email protected] Subject: [android-discuss] Re: Comparison of iPhone & G1 app selling Just needed to point out that his criticism seemed to boil down to that the app on iPhone sold in 1 day as much as the android app did in 3 weeks. If you take his estimation of deployed devices, 20-to-1 which is probably in the ballpark... you should see exactly that number of sales. 3 weeks = 21 days. Hardly newsworthy if you ask me. That said, his critsicisms of the Market's flaws are dead on and should be fixed. -J On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 10:00 AM, Al Sutton <[email protected]> wrote: > > http://twitter.com/markusN > > One app, two platforms, and some conclusions that hopefully Google > will take on board. > > Al. > > > --- > > * Written an Android App? - List it at http://andappstore.com/ * > > ====== > Funky Android Limited is registered in England & Wales with the > company number 6741909. The registered head office is Kemp House, > 152-160 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX, UK. > > The views expressed in this email are those of the author and not > necessarily those of Funky Android Limited, it's associates, or it's > subsidiaries. > > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. 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